For an instant, Maggie thought Lucinda might keep on coming, but there was a flash of recognition, and her gray face was suddenly flush with a warm, vibrant light. Her mouth hung open in shock for a long, puzzled moment, and when her lips moved to speak again, she produced no sound whatsoever. It didn’t matter. Maggie recognized the two syllables Lucinda was trying to produce, and she answered Lucinda’s silent question. “Yes,” she said as she offered up the lock. “Baby. Your baby.”
Slowly, as though she were afraid she might scare Maggie off, Lucinda raised her hand and gently took the lock of hair. She drew it close to her face. Then, Lucinda’s lips parted, and she uttered a mournful moan. She held the lock to her lips and took what looked like a deep breath. Whether or not she had the power of breath at her command, the light that flushed in Lucinda’s cheeks brightened, and for just a moment, Maggie saw the young mother she’d seen in the produce aisle of the Piggly Wiggly, a little tired, perhaps, and a bit more careworn than one would expect from a woman her age, but vital and driven. Alive.
It only lasted a moment, then that light was gone, and again, her face was ashen and gray. Lucinda had fallen silent. For a long moment, she stared at the lock in her hand, and before Maggie’s eyes, the tuft of hair faded away, the blond strands turning gray and shadowy, then disappearing into Lucinda’s form altogether as if she had somehow absorbed the talisman into her spirit. When there was nothing left of the lock, Lucinda turned her face up to meet Maggie’s gaze. For a while, the two faced each other quietly, each gazing at the other with pity, as though they each beheld someone with something terrible ahead of them. Then, Lucinda gestured with one hand for Maggie to follow, and she turned and retreated toward the icy river.
Maggie moved gingerly, mindful of stones and icy patches. The underbrush here grew nearly to the water’s edge, and though Maggie still held the flashlight in her right hand, she had switched it off and left it that way, as though switching it on would be somehow rude. When Lucinda reached the water’s edge, she turned to face Maggie, and with her right hand, pointed toward something that lay in the snow at the very edge of the frozen river.
Now Maggie had no choice. She knelt in the hard-packed frozen dirt and switched on her light.
There at the water’s edge, half-buried in chunks of ice that appeared to be broken as though with a shovel or some other tool, Maggie saw a bright blue plastic bag. A sound escaped her mouth with an exhalation that was visible before her face, but if she had intended to speak a word, Maggie had no idea what it might have been. She turned her face downriver for a moment and went over a mental map of the area. How far were they now from Lucinda’s house? A quarter-mile? Perhaps a bit more? Maggie remembered her conversation with Neal. She was sure Henry and Ronald would have walked this portion of the shore. How had they missed this?
Looking closer, Maggie got her answer. There were no footprints in the vicinity, neither in the snow nor in the mud, so if anyone had passed this way in the last few days, they hadn’t come close enough to the bag to leave a trail. Maggie noticed some patches of dark mud frozen in the creases of the bag. Even viewed by a flashlight, Maggie knew this dirt was blacker by several shades than the mud at the river’s edge. This was a rich black silt of the sort you would find in the riverbed. This bag had been in the muck at the bottom of the Little Horn River.
Something had brought it up to the surface and left it there for her. It might as well have had a bow on it.
The bag was tied shut with a crude, loose knot. Maggie opened it gingerly. Liquid water sloshed around inside. It hadn’t been at the surface long enough to freeze. She peered into the bag. First, she withdrew a large stone almost the size of a brick. It would have been more than enough to sink the package, and it should have kept it at the bottom of the river permanently. Underneath the stone was a tangled bit of clear tubing and a tiny bottle. Maggie bowed her head to get a closer look. She nearly touched the tubing, but when she realized what it was, she jerked her hand back. Attached to the tube was a syringe fitted with a hypodermic needle. The needle was capped by a bit of blue plastic, but Maggie could tell by the discoloration in the tube that there was liquid inside.
The syringe had been used.
“Oh, Lord,” Maggie said. She examined the bottle. It was a small medical vial with a white label and black lettering that read: Propofol. “What the hell is propofol?” Maggie asked no one at all. Though Maggie couldn’t make out all of the small print in the dim light, she noted that a stamp had been affixed to the label after manufacture with a dark blue ink. The stamp was partially smudged, but even so, Maggie could make out the familiar logo of a large “C” containing a smaller “G.” For Maggie, the logo always brought to mind a cartoon image of a big fish eating a smaller fish. It was the logo for Coalton General.
Maggie stared at the bottle for a long moment before she remembered she wasn’t alone. She turned her head up to face Lucinda, but the weeping woman had disappeared. Maggie looked up and down the riverbank, then out at the frozen surface of the river. Lucinda had gotten what she came for, and she’d brought Maggie a gift in return. Now Maggie had a job to do. Maggie bagged her evidence, then slowly rose to her feet. Before departing, she turned back out to face the river. She wanted to thank Lucinda, and she opened her mouth to do it, but as she looked around at the frozen river and empty riverbank, Maggie felt profoundly alone. There was no thanking Lucinda now. The weeping woman was gone. Maggie took her leave as well.
Next morning, Maggie awoke before her 6:00 alarm. She’d returned home at nearly 1:00 AM, and though she was sure Neal wouldn’t have minded a late call given what she’d found, Maggie thought better of it. There was nothing they could do with the evidence until morning, and Neal had looked like he could use the rest. Maggie let him have it even though she passed most of the night with her eyes wide open and her gaze fixed on the ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the image of the phantasm she’d met that night at the river. When sleep finally came, it was brief and fitful, and though she awoke every bit as exhausted as she’d been when she’d gone to bed, she was anxious to arise and do what needed to be done.
Maggie’s call woke Neal from a dead sleep. “Maggie,” he told her, his voice crackling with sleep, “I ain’t had my coffee yet. Keep it simple. I’m feeling real stupid.”
So, Maggie kept it simple, relating only the facts of the new evidence she’d secured. After giving him the location of the find, Maggie had to repeat herself twice to make him believe it. “Dammit, Maggie,” he said, “Henry and Ronald searched that area twice, maybe three times. Hell, I walked the whole bank from up near Lucinda’s place all the way to Waterfront Park myself the day before yesterday. Wasn’t doodley-squat out there.”
“Well, there was last night,” Maggie replied. She told him about the bag’s contents. She’d had more than enough time the night before to check and double check the stamp on the label, and when Neal heard it had come from Coalton General, he cursed once under his breath, then a second time aloud. In the background, Maggie heard the sleepy voice of Neal’s wife, Jennifer, as she scolded the obscenity.
“All right,” Neal said finally. “Let me make some calls. With any luck, Doc Caldwell will be able to get a hold of that specialist out of Frankfort who she’s been working with and we’ll find out if they screened for this… what’s it called?”
Propofol.”
“Right,” Neal said. “Spelling?” Maggie gave it to him, paused for him to scribble a note. “Ever heard of it before?”
“Negative. You?”
“Huh uh,” Neal replied. “But I got a copy of Physician’s Desk Reference at the office.”
Maggie could have kicked herself. “I forgot about that. I could’ve stopped in last night.”
“Well, we’ll check there first,” Neal replied. “Then… hell, Maggie, this is big. It’s gonna take more than Doc Caldwell. I gotta get Hennyson and the case worker out of CHFS on it, too.”
“All right,” Magg
ie replied. “I doubt that’s how they were planning to spend this particular day.”
“What do you mean?” Neal responded.
“Today,” Maggie said. “You know what today is, right?”
Neal reflected for a moment. “Oh,” he said finally. Maggie heard the flick of a lighter and a hiss of butane over the line. Neal took a deep drag of his cigarette. “I’ll be damned. Christmas Eve.”
“Yup.”
“Well, hell, law enforcement doesn’t take holidays, my friend.”
“Don’t suppose it does,” Maggie replied. “See you at the office?”
“Damn right you will.” Again, Maggie heard a grumbled complaint about language, then Neal was gone.
It might have been Christmas Eve, but Neal had things clicking before most of the rest of Burgettsville had gotten out of bed. The drug was the first mystery they had to crack, and their first shot turned up nothing. Both Maggie and Neal pored through the PDR, but neither found any reference to a drug called “propofol.”
Their next step was to contact Dr. Caldwell. The good doctor, it turned out, was an avid runner and an early riser to boot, so Neal risked a 7 AM call and found she’d already been out for a morning run and had returned to a cup of coffee. Dr. Caldwell hadn’t heard of propofol either, but as it turned out, the specialist she’d been working with was still in town, and after a quick call to consult with him, Dr. Caldwell called back with news. Though Maggie couldn’t make out any details of what the doctor said, she could tell from Neal’s expression that it was big. Neal got the news from Dr. Caldwell, and they made some quick plans for how to proceed. When he hung up, Neal’s eyes were wide. “What have we got?” Maggie asked.
“Son of a bitch, Maggie,” Neal said, shaking his head slightly. “Seems Doc Caldwell’s specialist is some kind of serious whiz-kid. He’s trained with the eggheads at Quantico in forensic pharmacology.’” Neal shook his head. “Doc Caldwell said he about crapped his pants when she gave him the name of this drug.”
“Jeez, Neal,” Maggie replied, “what do we have here?”
Neal fished with two fingers into his shirt pocket, fetched out a cigarette and lighter. “Seems the problem is our copy of the PDR is a couple years out of date.” He lit his smoke and shook his head in disbelief. “This propofol stuff is new, Maggie. Like brand new. It was only approved by the FDA last year.”
“Well, what the hell is it?”
Neal picked the evidence bag up off his desk and held it up for examination. “This, Deputy Dell, is the latest and greatest anesthetic on the market. Surgical grade stuff. Caldwell’s specialist says the takedown time on it is so fast that pharmacists have been calling it milk of amnesia. Just a touch and the patient is out like a light.” Neal put the evidence down gently on his desk. “Another touch and the patient damn well better be on a ventilator, because this stuff stops a patient’s breathing as easy as turning off a lamp.” Neal nodded thoughtfully. “Lord, Maggie,” he said. “It’s the perfect poison.”
“Did Caldwell screen for it?”
Neal shook his head. “Nope. Like I said, it’s brand new. They didn’t know to look for it. But Doc Caldwell’s whiz kid is more than a little excited to take another run at the tox screen, so as long as he doesn’t speed off the road and into a ditch before he makes it to her office, they’ll be running fresh tests as soon as we can get the evidence into their hands.”
Maggie nodded. “You drive. I’ll ride shotgun and take naps between blinks.”
“Long night?”
“You know it.”
Neal grabbed the evidence bags and they were off.
They had a twenty-minute drive out to the state police post where the Major Crimes Unit’s forensics lab was housed, and they spent most of it making their game plan for the rest of the day. After delivering Doctor Caldwell the evidence, they had some digging of their own to do. Their next stop would be Coalton General. Though the little city of Coalton itself wasn’t much bigger than Burgettsville, it had grown up as a hub for the industries that had boomed along the Ohio River after WWII. Though business had slowed down in Coalton over the last generation, it was still home to most of the corporate money in the region. As the largest hospital in town, Coalton General constituted a big enough bureaucracy to slow a Christmas Eve investigation down to a snail’s pace.
However, in Coalton as in Burgettsville and any other town, it pays to know people at the top, and Neal happened to be golfing buddies with the husband of Sara Mahaney, one of the hospital’s Chief Medical Officers. Sara was in the office that day, and when Neal explained to her that they were looking into a possible homicide with evidence that had come out of Coalton General’s pharmacy, she had the head pharmacist in her office within five minutes.
The pharmacist's name was Stan Lincoln. Stan was in his late-20s or early-30s. He wore a gold hoop in his right ear, his hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and the collar of what appeared to be a tie-dyed t-shirt peeked out from under his white lab coat. As he entered the office, Stan did a double-take and gave Neal and Maggie a look of barely concealed distaste. Mr. Lincoln, it seemed, did not like the police. He liked it even less when Sara told him they’d need some information from him. At first, Stan filibustered, going into a long description of the pharmacy’s inventory system, but Neal waved him off. “I’m sure you have a fantastic system, son,” Neal said, handing him a slip of paper containing all the details they’d copied from the Propofol bottle. “I just need to know who signed this out.”
The interruption tweaked Stan’s nerves, and his expression turned a touch haughty. He eyeballed the numbers, thought it over, then announced he’d have to check his records. They were just switching over to a computerized system, he explained, and though speaking the word “computer” aloud gave him obvious delight, he nevertheless had to warn there could be delays. Only part of the last month’s log had been entered into the new system, it seemed, meaning he might have to track down paper records, and he thought someone named Lou might have sent some records to off-site storage. As Maggie quietly suppressed her desire to take her baton to Stan’s kneecaps to see if he might be carrying some useful information in them, Neal accepted Stan’s proposal to get them the info by early afternoon, or “two-thirty at the latest.” With that, Stan Lincoln was on his way, and Neal and Maggie departed soon after, shaking their heads silently at each other as they went.
They picked up a fast food breakfast to go, carried it back to the office, and while they ate, Neal worked the phones. Alec Hennyson, the county attorney, had apparently already left for a holiday ski trip with his wife. Hennyson was legendary for keeping his staff terrified of him, and they’d been given strict orders not to give up his holiday contact information for anything other than a real emergency, so Neal had to play phone tag with several other local shakers-and-movers to light a big enough fire under Hennyson’s secretary to get the information. Once he had the number, they lost another forty-five minutes jumping through various hoops trying to get from the front desk at Hennyson’s hotel to a direct line with the man himself. Hennyson had apparently been skiing, and he was, in his own words, “in no mood to talk shop,” so Neal was hard pressed to get him to listen. Since there was nothing she could do to help, Maggie left Neal to work on Hennyson in private.
By this time, word about Maggie’s find had made it around the department, so as soon as she stepped out of Neal’s office, Henry pulled her aside to get her version of the story. He didn’t want to believe she’d found the evidence where she said she’d found it, and he quizzed her suspiciously. “Well, hell,” he said after she’d told him the same story a third time, “what were you even doing out at Little Horn that time of night?”
“Oh,” Maggie replied, “I was just working an angle for Neal.”
Henry persisted. “What kind of angle?”
Maggie didn’t know anything to tell him at that point but the truth. “I was just working the graveyard shift,” she replied flatly.
H
enry just looked at the floor and nodded. In an instant, he seemed to remember he had something pressing that needed to be done, and he was gone.
The rest of the morning and early afternoon slipped away with Neal working the phones. He haggled with the prosecutor, went back and forth with the case worker from CHFS, and took calls with multiple contacts from the State Police Major Crimes Office. In almost every case, he had to chase people down on vacations and family outings, and with each conversation, he built the same case over and over again. Maggie knew these were all dedicated professionals, and they cared about their jobs, but holidays are holidays. So Neal called in favors. In a few cases, he might have even risked some clout. He’d been at it for over an hour before Maggie noticed the folder he had open on the desk in front of him. It was the file on Lucinda’s case. On top of a stack of papers sat a photo from the crime scene. The image was a Polaroid, and in it, Lucinda was tiny and pale and by far more lifeless than she’d been at the river’s edge the night before. Neal tapped a finger absently at the edge of the Polaroid as he spoke as though he were unconsciously refocusing himself over and over. He was not about to be denied.
Shortly after lunch, a clamor of voices arose outside the office, and Maggie and Henry stepped outside to find a group of carolers in the parking lot. The group consisted of members of First Street Baptist, Maggie’s own church. Reverend Johnson stood at the head of the group with the choir director Jane Sherman at his side, and as soon as the deputies stepped out, Jane cued the singers who launched into a spirited rendition of “O Come All Ye Faithful.” Among the clutch of familiar faces, Maggie spotted her family. Judy stood near the back of the group, with Jack and Dougie at her side, while out at the very front, clearly hoping to catch her eye, Andy stood with a lyric sheet in hand. When Maggie made eye contact, he waved wildly, jostling the kids who stood beside him.
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